Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore – Buy a Book for Christmas #Memoirs – Brigid P. Gallagher, Chuck Jackson, Karen Ingalls and D.G. Kaye

Some suggestions for your Christmas reading, or gift ideas!

Smorgasbord Blog Magazine

Today I am featuring some of the memoirs in the Cafe and Bookstore. Until the publishing revolution which gave back the power to writers.. memoirs were tell-all stories, often ghost written, by the rich and infamous. Today we can all tell our stories, and these true experiences are invaluable to others who may have gone through something similar. From overcoming disease, abuse, life threatening events, these memoirs inspire, inform and encourage others to speak out or to accept that they are not alone and help is available.

Memoirs can be tough to read, but so many of us carry a burden that we would like to lay down, and discovering other’s courage can help us do that.

The first memoir is by Brigid P. Gallagher and shares her experiences and also strategies to overcome chronic illness in Watching for the Daisies.

About the book

Millions of people around the world…

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The Midsomer work camp

I’m sure all the Midsomer Murders aficionados out there will understand that Inspector Barnaby would lament the demise of this admirable institution on his patch (and rue its subsequent use).

thelearningprofessor

You might realise by now that I enjoy a bit of crime fiction, and that includes a taste for Midsomer Murders, even though it is way past its peak as a more or less gentle mockery of middle class manners. Midsomer doesn’t exist, of course, but its county capital, Cawston, is largely filmed in the Thames Valley market town of Wallingford. And Wallingford, as well as being the fictional home of many a murderous snob with status anxieties, has a history.

In 1911, the Christian Social Union, effectively the social service arm of the Congregationalist and Presbyterian Churches, purchased a farm near Wallingford for use as a labour colony. The Congregationalists viewed social service as a form of missionary work, a view articulated particularly by the Nottingham minister John Brown Paton, who helped popularise in Britain the ideas of the Lutheran Pastor von Bodelschwingh, who had launched an elaborate system…

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Danger by Association Giveaway

Win a paperback thriller!

Heather Burnside Author

Next month is the last of my giveaways for paperback copies of The Riverhill Trilogy. Big congratulations to those of you who have already won signed copies of Slur and A Gangster’s Grip.

If you didn’t win a copy, don’t worry, you can still be in with a chance of winning a signed, original copy of Danger by Association.

Readers will be notified by newsletter of how to enter the giveaway. To receive my newsletters you will need to sign up to my mailing list by following the link: Heather’s Readers. It’s quick and easy to sign up and means you will also be amongst the first readers to find out about new releases and special offers.

Bye for now and good luck.

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Murderous learning – more reflections on adult education in crime fiction

Can adult education have a sinister side?

thelearningprofessor

Recently I’ve been enjoying a crime novel by an Irish writer, Tana French. The Trespasser is set in Dublin, and its central character is Antoinette Conway, a hard-boiled murder squad detective of mixed race. The novel is interesting on belonging, family, gender, low-level racism, and internal hierarchies in the police. And it also touches upon adult education.

Aislinn, the murder victim, is described as a serial attender of evening classes. The detectives draw up a list of all the classes she took with a view to checking out ‘all the other students or whatever they call them’, a lead they pursue by looking though her financial records for fee payments.

I’d wondered whether this meant that the murder turned on an evening class, which would have been mightily entertaining. But no; Antoinette describes the list of evening classes as ‘depressing as hell’:

Aislinn genuinely paid actual money for a…

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Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore – Spring Showcase – Cynthia Reyes, Tony Riches, Jane Risdon, Carol Roberts, Hugh W. Roberts, Annette Rochelle Aben, Alexis Rose, Nicholas Rossis, Debra Russell and Patricia Salamone.

Another batch of suggestions for your Spring reading pleasure.

Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore – Spring Showcase – Helen Jones, Andrew Joyce, Deanna Kahler, D.G. Kaye, Alethea Kehas, Heather Kindt, Joy Lennick, Geoff Le Pard, John Maberry and Debbi Mack

A Spring selection of new reading.

Adult educators and the UK honours system

The business of accepting honours from ‘the Establishment’ is a thorny problem and, in the end, has to sit well (or otherwise) with one’s conscience.

thelearningprofessor

Arise, Sir Alan

I’ve been quietly celebrating the award of a knighthood to Alan Tuckett, a lifelong adult educator who is probably best known for his leadership of the National Institute for Adult Continuing Education. Celebrating because the award acknowledges the way in which Alan didn’t simply ‘do his job’, but used his position to provide leadership and visibility for the wider field of adult learning, so that the knighthood can be understood as a public recognition of an important but often overlooked field.

All of this said, I don’t approve of the UK honours system on principle. The system rests on patronage and has been thoroughly tainted by cronyism and rewards for people – notably civil servants – who simply have ‘done their job’. It perpetuates the language of Empire and aristocratic rule, so I find it hard to see how it sits with the egalitarian and meritocratic world…

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